Spacewalkers tackle coolant leak on space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A pair of spacewalking astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on Thursday to bypass a leak in one of the outpost's cooling systems.

Engineers suspect a micrometeoroid or tiny piece of space debris may have punched a hole no bigger than the width of a hair into one of the station's radiators.

The devices dissipate heat from batteries and other equipment aboard the solar-powered station, a $100 billion laboratory for biological, fluid physics and other science experiments now flying about 255 miles above Earth.

Station commander Sunita Williams and flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide left the station's Quest airlock around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) and returned 6.5 hours later after reconfiguring some ammonia coolant lines and hooking up a spare radiator.

"Suni and Aki, our heartfelt congratulations to you and the entire team," astronaut Mike Fincke radioed to the spacewalkers from Mission Control in Houston. "We've accomplished just about everything we set out to do today."

The leak is small so it will take several weeks to determine if the radiator was the source, said space station program manager Mike Suffredini.

If routing ammonia through the spare radiator does not stem the leak, another spacewalk to replace a pump or other equipment in the system may be needed.

Unless it is fixed, the leak would eventually trigger the cooling system to shut down, leaving the station without a backup system for a section of the station's solar arrays.

The cooling system holds about 50 pounds (22.7 kg) of ammonia. It would automatically shut down if the ammonia level drops to 40 pounds (18 kg), said flight director Mike Lammers.

As ground control teams prepared for the spacewalk on Wednesday, the station had to maneuver to avoid another piece of debris, part of the wreckage from the 2009 collision of an Iridium communications satellite and a Russian satellite.

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Spacewalkers tackle coolant leak on space station